Mourning Ruby (24 page)

I stayed, because I saw how close to the edge she was. Solange might go crazy with a kitchen knife, slashing our velvet curtains, our plump salon upholstery, maybe even the dresses we wore.

‘And what’s
she
, I’d like to know? What’s she that’s so wonderful?’

‘You know what she is, Solange,’ I said mildly.

‘You’re dead right there! I do know! And I’ll make sure everyone knows what she is, before I’m finished.’

She would say nothing. Everyone in town knew Madame Blanche’s business. It was only the detail, the manner of it all, that they didn’t care to know.

‘You want to get that kiddie out of here, if you ask my advice. Your Claire. Find yourself a decent feller and get off out of here, m’m’zelle Florence. I’m saying it for your own good.’

She moved close to me and looked into my face, part of her liking the drama of it, part of her, I still believe, really caring what happened to me. We had never quarrelled. Solange was always good to Claire. She made apple purée for her, and chicken soup, and let Claire climb up on a stool to play with pastry.

Claire will miss Solange.

‘It’s not as easy as that,’ I said.

‘Get away from here and nobody’ll know what you’ve come from. What you’ve been.’

I moved away from her and went to the window. ‘I know you mean well, Solange,’ I said. ‘But I have to think of Claire.’

‘It’s true, a decent man won’t take another feller’s leavings,’ said Solange, without the least malice in her voice. ‘They like to think they’re the first, even when they know they can’t be.’ Her face changed from anger to plump pleasure. She was thinking of how she had caught the miller. She had tricked him into believing that he was the first.

Now she’s packed her bags and off she’s gone, trudging up to the crossroads to meet the miller. She knows that he’s sixty, well past the age of military service, a prosperous and not completely ugly widower. Maybe she thinks he’s a jolly feller because of his red shining face and the way he likes what he calls a good handful to get hold of on a winter night. She won’t credit that he’s said to have killed his first wife. Not that he ever used violence, he’s not the type. That wasn’t the way he took his pleasure.

He’s a type that frightens me. They set their minds on one thing and they can’t be diverted, no matter what. Where a normal man would yield or forget or just grow bored, a man like the miller goes on planning and working until he gets what he wants. He’s got something wrong with his hands, too. I don’t want to think of Solange in those hands.

He killed his wife day by day, with the drip of meanness and cruelty and lovelessness. He mocked her flat
chest and the way she scurried to please him. He stared at her while she ate until she could not swallow a mouthful. I knew her, and I know she was glad to die. Anything to get away from the private torments he had devised for her.

I told Solange about her death, when I heard that the business between her and the miller was serious. She stared back at me, blank and mutinous. She told me that people had got it all wrong. She knew exactly what they were saying and it was all lies, the lot of it. In fact it was libel, she said, bringing out the word with triumph, trumping me.

She wanted her ignorance. She clung to it. Or maybe she was more of an optimist than I’d thought, and she believed she could change him. There’s a third possibility, I suppose: that she hated it so much here, in this house, that any alternative was to be preferred. But I can’t believe that.

So, here I am in the kitchen, taking Solange’s place for the day. Carefully, I put a long metal spoon through the savoury crust of sausage and white-bean casserole. A dish from home. I stir gently, so as not to pulp the beans, add a handful of parsley, and replace the lid. The girls will be hungry. They are always hungry and they like big country dishes, cassoulets and casseroles and juicy hams. When our visitors are here we crumble sweet cake, but behind the scenes we draw up our chairs to the long oak table which is black with age, and tuck into a meal which lets you know you’ve put something in your stomach.

Madame Blanche makes sure that our establishment is not affected by food shortages.

‘Florence?’ says Madame Blanche. I don’t startle and I don’t immediately turn round. I bend to swing the heavy pot back into the oven. The oven’s heat buffets my face and I’m aware of Madame Blanche’s eyes on my back, on the nape of my neck, on the coils of my hair, on the muscles which flex in my arms as I push the metal rack firmly back into the oven.

She sees everything. She’ll notice that my hair is not as smooth as it should be. She will think I have been with one of our visitors.

‘So. Who was here, Florence? Anyone new? Anyone interesting?’

I turn to face her, wiping my hands on a kitchen cloth.

‘Major Blackie and the two captains who came with him before. One went with Mariette, one with Lucie. The Major stayed in the salon, listening to Marie-Claude.’

‘And Gabrielle?’

‘Still in bed. I’ve given her raspberry tea. She’s really unwell.’

‘It’s the fifth day? Or the sixth?’

‘The fifth.’

‘Annoying,’ says Madame Blanche. ‘She should be able at least to help in the kitchen by now if she can do nothing else. It would free you. So, Solange has left us. Well, that’s only what we expected, isn’t it? In another day or two I would have given Solange her
congé
, but it’s better that she left of her own accord. That business with the miller wasn’t reflecting well on us.’

And she smiles at me, broadly, as if we’ve cooked up Solange’s departure between us, conspirators in this as in so many things.

‘In fact, it was one of the reasons for my absence
today,’ she goes on. ‘The new cook is engaged and she arrives tomorrow. We can give our dear Solange away to the miller without a care in our hearts.’

A repulsive and unlikely image rises in my mind. Down the church aisle, out of the doorway and into the sunlight rolls Solange, locked onto the arm of her miller. She is a nightmare of orange-blossom and white lace. Behind comes Madame Blanche, smiling her broad, inscrutable smile, and following in a procession are the girls in their best dresses, chattering and laughing and throwing rice. Thank God, I don’t see myself.

‘Why are you smiling, my dear Florence?’

‘No reason.’

‘When I was young I also used to smile for no reason. It’s nice to see it,’ she adds, looking at me with those eyes which I thought were black the night I met her. But they are not black, they’re a deep purplish-brown, the colour of dates. She has beautifully cut eyelids, but her eyes have a sheen on them which defies you when you try to look into them. It is so hard to make out her expression. And yet sometimes, just often enough to keep you tantalized, there is something bewitchingly personal about the way she looks at you. As if she has seen all of you, down to the bone.

‘So, nothing else new?’

‘An officer from the aerodrome,’ I say casually. ‘His name is William Hazell. Not young.’

‘Who introduced him?’

As she asks, I realize I don’t know.

‘A pilot? A squadron leader, perhaps?’

A squadron leader! Well, I’ve never been able to fault Madame Blanche for lack of ambition. But in fact I’ve
no idea what he was. Pilot… observer… maybe even a balloonatic…

A birdman, anyway.

‘He went with Mariette,’ I tell her.

She nods. ‘Mariette has had a busy day. Remind me to give her the velvet rose in my top right-hand bureau drawer, to trim her black straw.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you, my dear Florence? What have we been able to do for you today, apart from stirring the pot, which I saw you do so competently.’

‘Captain Marwood came in later. Just for an hour.’

‘Very good. That’s the fifth time – or the sixth?’

‘The sixth.’

‘If he has friends, Florence, encourage him to bring them.’

Life-long friendships are forged quickly here. Life-long doesn’t mean the same as it does in normal life, although that’s not to say it means any less. One fine afternoon four young brother-officers may sit in our salon, smoking each other’s cigarettes, asking each other to hum the songs they have half-forgotten, so that Marie-Claude can play them. Even though she’d prefer to impress us all with Liszt, she likes the warm, rapt faces and the way they sing along when she plays.

They lean against each other and talk in their own language which I have to learn just as much as the other girls, even though my English is perfect. If they are from the aerodrome, they talk about good shows and bad shows and Archie and dropping eggs. They laugh at each other’s jokes, clothes, and singing voices. They talk about having the wind-up sometimes, though always with a
laugh and always in the past tense. They bite their nails and their hands shake. But as long as all their nails are bitten, and all their glasses spill over if they’re filled too full, and all of them get the wind-up sometimes, then the badness of it is divided, too.

They are like us, although it feels wrong to say it, even inside my own head. If each one of us had to live the days we live alone, how would this life be possible? But we have patterns and they weave us together. We are a group, just as the men are a group. Imagine if they heard me say that.

We look out for each other. Mariette will perch on Gabrielle’s bed to show her how the velvet rose looks on the black straw, and let her know that Madame’s really on the warpath this time, so Gabrielle had better slap on rouge and get herself down into the salon sharpish. ‘
And you’re silly about drink, Gabi, you ought to try a couple of brandies. It gets you through with that nice warm feeling inside you
.’

Sometimes I wonder how the men manage to peel away from their friendship for long enough to go to bed with us. But even when they’re in bed with us, they don’t separate from each other, not really. We’re part of the group life they live. One goes with Mariette this time, his friend the next. It’s as close as they can get to going to bed with one another, which they would never do. They compare experiences afterwards. They talk about our breasts and our hips, but not about the things that really surprise them, such as the smell of us and the hair we have and where we have it, and the way our bodies look so much larger when we are naked than when we are dressed, and the way we are still in control
when they have lost themselves and are panting and gasping as if their lives are in our hands. They don’t talk about any of these things.

‘Will you remember me, Florence?’ one of them asked once. He had rolled off me clumsily, and was lying on his back smoking a cigarette. He was a nice boy, with red hair and fine, thin skin. And a smile that let me know he was no fool. I can’t remember what he was called. He came a few times, then he stopped coming. I do remember that he was eighteen, six years younger than me. But there was something else. He was one of the few, the very few, who realized that I had a child.

While he was smoking his cigarette, Claire began to cry, out in the garden. A sudden, piercing yell and then a silence that quivered. She was trying to get her breath. She must have fallen hard.

No one came to her straightaway. The silence broke and she began to cry again, hard and rhythmic. I sat up in bed to listen. It was a strong, angry cry so I knew she hadn’t hurt herself much. But why didn’t anyone come? And then feet came running across the terrace.

‘Oh, Clairey, I thought you’d half-killed yourself, and now look at you, only a beensy little scratch on your knee. I can’t even hardly see it –’

It was Gabrielle. She’d be pressing Claire’s red, wet face against her neck. Gabi loved to hold Claire.

‘You come along with Auntie Gabrielle, she’s got something to show you, if you’re a good girl…’ Her voice receded. She would be walking down into the orchard, carrying Claire, who wasn’t crying any more. The red-haired boy was watching me.

‘My sister’s got a boy and a girl,’ he said. ‘Twins. She
harks just like you did, when one of ’em sings out. She can tell if it’s anything wrong, just from the noise they make. She says there’s all sorts of crying.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s your kid, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she live here with you?’

‘Where else would she live?’

He nodded, and got up from the bed.

I listen to Madame Blanche’s lilac heels tapping away down the corridor. She will look into every room she passes, pausing, assessing, a word here and a word there, a smile for Mariette, a long, considering frown for Gabrielle. Then to her own apartments, as they’re called. Her bedroom, and her little private salon where she receives her own visitors. She will be drawing the pins from her hat now. Another name will be lodged in the account book she keeps in her mind. William Hazell. She will remember that he is from the aerodrome. She will remember the colourless voice in which I gave her his name.

Here’s Marguerite.

‘’selle Florence, Claire’s ready to say goodnight.’

‘I’ll be up in a minute, Marguerite.’

I want to pick up my skirts and race up the two flights of stairs to the attic room where Claire nestles in her cot-bed, rosy and big-eyed with sleepiness, right hand curled around her plush mouse, left thumb in her mouth. Half asleep already. But I wouldn’t want anyone to hear the beat of my footsteps, the eagerness in them, the way my whole body longs to catch Claire up and
press her, press her tight to my heart at the end of yet another day in this house, which is also our home. I don’t want Madame Blanche to hear the hunger in my steps. I don’t want her to note anything more in the account book she makes of my soul.

Dearest Rebecca,

(If you’ve got this far…)

What I realized after thinking about Florence and writing about her was how weary she is. She’s a young woman but she’s weary. She’s being used up. She prostitutes herself so that Claire will survive and she will survive. The officers are clean, the house is elegant, there’s a garden, there’s music, the food is good and plentiful. But the fact is that Florence is there to be used until she’s used up, like the other girls.